Just a few words on a remarkable town hall meeting.
Not so remarkable for the presentation or the nature of the questions, given the tenor of the times. Or for the fact that it happened, since the senator who hosted it has held more than 500 previously over the years.
But Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley's town hall Sunday afternoon at McMinnville was striking in several ways.
For the size of the audience, for one ting. It likely will not be the largest period, since Yamhill County, the site of this one, is only about a 10th largest county in the state. But it drew enough people that the choice of meeting venue was notable by itself. A few weeks ago, fellow Oregon Senator Ron Wyden (now well past town hall 1,100) held his McMinnville event at a meeting room at Chemeketa College, and the crowd at that meeting, while larger than the norm for the county at maybe 100 people, fit comfortably into the room. That one was held jut around the time of the Donald Trump inauguration. The crowd at the Merkley event was at least four times as large, and a middle school basketball court was packed to standing room only.
Ordinarily, most of the people at the senators' town halls are repeat attendees. Clearly, this event drew a whole lot of newcomers.
It's not that Merkley is more popular or a bigger draw than Wyden. The difference is in the headlines coming from Washington, and the damage already done to services around the state. Unusually for these kind of events, people were carrying signs. Examples included "Impeach Trump" and "family of ex-federal employee." (The employee got a chance to tell his story, which told about how he and half of his research team just lost their jobs conducting research vital to Oregon's natural resource industry.)
The crowd had a fierce energy about it.
For his part, Merkley, who had sometimes seemed a little less energetic in his last couple of local town halls, was pumped up, organized, frequently eloquent and ready to roll. He and the audience meshed.
Merkley made the point that if, a decade ago, someone had predicted our country would be in the pickle it's now in, no one would have believed it - it would not have seemed credible. But here we are, and he advised the audience to push back.
The audience seemed fully on board with that.
It was quite a contrast to recent reports of town halls held by Republican members of Congress, as in the case of Oregon's House Republican Cliff Bentz. In LaGrande, in the middle of a large region heavily supportive of Trump up to now, as Betz tried defending the administration, "A vocal majority of the audience expressed frustration and anger with President Donald Trump’s executive orders, the firing of thousands of federal workers and the actions of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency."
Members of Congress from both parties will be bringing some clear memories back to D.C. as they return from recess.